You discover how confounding the world is when you try to draw it. You look at a car, and you try to see its car-ness, and you’re like an immigrant to your own world. You don’t have to travel to encounter weirdness. You wake up to it.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the complexity of the world and our perception of it through art.
Shaun Tan's quote reflects on the challenges artists face in perceiving and representing reality. It suggests that even familiar objects, like a car, can seem foreign and bizarre when examined closely, illustrating how art can reveal the strangeness and beauty in the everyday world. The act of drawing becomes a journey of discovery, emphasizing that the unusual and confounding elements of life are ever-present, waiting to be explored through creativity.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of art in society, one might use this quote to illustrate how creativity changes our perspective.
It's so easy to call something a Jewish story or a gay story or a woman's story. Aesthetically, if a story is not universal, it has failed. Your obligation is to the story. One rule creatively, and emotionally, is its universality.
I don't like to write rhetorically or get on a soapbox. I try to make the stuff multi-layered, so that it always has a life outside its social context. I don't believe that you can tell people anything; you can only draw them in.
There's poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don't like doing what people expect me to do.
Gene [Siskel] often mentioned something François Truffaut once told him: the most beautiful sight in a movie theater is to walk down to the front, turn around, and look at the light from the screen reflected on the upturned faces of the members of the audience.
The Beauty raised her eyes, the only part of her that was truly beautiful.
What's great about being a character actor is you know that you can survive forever. It's not about the gloss of your eyebrows.
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